Tragicomedy on Thanksgiving

11/25/2016 – See what happened backstage while Carlsen and Karjakin fought it out in game ten: Maxim Dlugy reports: "It was getting clear that Magnus has to make the most out of today’s White pieces. The fight was tense, grandmasters watching the game were electrified. Read about the crowd in the VIP Lounge in our report from Fulton Market, Manhattan.

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Behind the Scenes: Game 10 / By Maxim Dlugy

Your reporter with his wife Inna. It's still bright and beautiful outside on the terrace of the VIP hall

Today I decided to take my wife Inna and two year old daughter Daniella to witness the possibly most important game of this event. It was getting clear that Magnus has to make the most out of today’s White pieces, as relying on them for the last game (even he holds the next one to a draw) has only met with success four times in the history of World Championships, with Lasker, Botvinnik, Kasparov and Kramnik beings the heroes who saved their titles by winning the last game with White.

Playing Mr. Sofia Rules

My daughter was having a nap, so I was quite free to go about looking for interesting nuggets of information. Silvio Danailov challenged me to some blitz, offering me to give him slight odds of 3 to 5 minutes. He hasn’t played chess in 12 years, but has recently agreed to participate in a round robin where he scored 2/9 in a tough field. I was intrigued to play the man behind the Sofia rules that I believe helped the perception of chess in the world and after the first two of my wins, Silvio played very well to beat me in the third game.

At this point I stopped, as my student Joris Katz arrived with his father Paul. Joris is my student who I haven’t seen in over six months since he started attending a boarding school, and I wanted to spend some time with him.

Ian is taking on my pupil Joris Katz

Incidentally Paul was responsible for bringing the Pawn Sacrifice movie to the chess world, a task which I helped him with over a year ago. Paul and I discussed the possibility of marketing the chess book I recently completed, 'Grandmaster Insides', outside of the chess world, while Joris signed up to plan Ian Nepomniachtchi in the simul. When my student played the Scandinavian, I came over and Ian looked with a puzzled look and said: "He is playing your Scandinavian". I confessed that he is playing my pupil. After equalizing in the opening though, Joris castled queenside, which gave Ian enough tactics to break through.

Electrifying moves

I decided to concentrate on the key game at that point and went over to Lev Alburt to analyze the game by hand on a board. At that point it seemed White should play g3 to force the knight to h3, whereupon Kg2 looked like the most sensible king retreat, so as to meet Ng5 with Ng1. Magnus did play g3, but retreated the king to h1, which I didn‘t understand. A few moves later as he exchanged bishops on e6, I was surprised again. Bc2, Nd2 or even Bc4 looked much more sensible to keep the game going. As it turned out as soon as Sergey recaptured the scene in the VIP crowd electrified.

Mark Glukhovsky, the Russian Federations CEO, Igor Burstein, the owner of the 64 Magazine, Georgy Kacheishvili, one of the top chess coaches in NY and Kirill Zangalis, Sergey's manager besides many others, like myself, were certain the game will end momentarily as the not-so-deep forced line starting with Nxf2 was obvious to everyone who played a some chess.

Discussing the capture 20…Nxf2

Former Colleagues at 64 Magazine, Mark Glukhovsky and Igor Burstein. Always nice to see them!

When Karjakin produced ...d5 - everyone gasped, while Lev Alburt even ventured to guess that Karjakin could not have missed the draw after Nf2, and simply wants to play on. That was hard to believe as Kirill quickly checked the engine and announced it was now about half a pawn in White's favor.

Game 10, after 20.Nd2 and before 20...d5

It seemed Magnus saw he was reprieved and looked for a way to pounce. The audience assumed he would go with f3, which seemed to keep a nice edge, but he quickly went for Qh5, another suboptimal move which allowed Black another draw incorporating the idea he just missed with another two tactical ideas. At this point the feeling in the audience was that Sergey will now be forced to find the draw staring at him on the board, as the alternative clearly led to a worse ending, but the challenger’s vision was not crisp enough and he opted to sound retreat. It looked like Magnus will finally have a chance to win his first game in the match when he produced the very superficial 26. Ref1, which could have seen his advantage reduced substantially after 26...Raf8, forcing him to find Nd1 or Rf1, as Re2 would be met with Nf4!

When I looked at the screen, I could not believe it. Black had quickly responded 26...h5 evening the number of unforced errors at three apiece within seven moves. I had to go to Thanksgiving dinner, but as I was leaving the feeling that Karjakin has now ALSO lost his form had me think that this could well be Magnus's day after all.

There you have it - we are looking towards a weekend of amazing tension!

I can’t wait to be there.

Postscriptum after the match - the World Championship reports by Maxim Dlugy:

Maxim DlugyMaxim Dlugy was born 1966 in Moscow and in 1977 his family emigrated to the US. In 1985 Dlugy became World Junior Champion and later made a career on Wall Street. He is married with children, lives in New York, and loves to play blitz.

See also

12/3/2016 – During the World Chess Championship match, Yasser Seirawan's article "A Radical Solution" was causing reactions from all sides. In a second article, the grandmaster is addressing his audience for a second time and specifies his criticism - regarding the format of the match. "A Radical Solution - Redux"...

See also

12/1/2016 – Maxim Dlugy did not want to miss the tie-breaker that was to decide the World Championship match between Sergey Karjakin and Magnus Carlsen. On Wednesday he visited the Fulton Market Building again and saw an exciting finish of a tough World Championship match. However, blitz specialist Dlugy wondered about Karjakin's handling of the clock.

Video

Former World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik liked to play the French and once described it as a 'difficult and dangerous opening'. But in this 60 minutes video IM Andrew Martin suggests an aggressive and little-used idea of the renowned attacking player GM Viktor Kupreichik to counter the French: 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Be3!?. Andrew Martin uses the games of Kupreichik to show why this line could catch many French aficionados unprepared and is very dangerous for Black. Attacking players will love this line and the unusual complications that it promotes.

Discuss

Really?! You speak for all chess fans?!... I like 'atmosphere' articles like these, in addition to the chess analysis, which we're also getting, by the way - it's not like Dlugy's articles are the only reports we get on the games. I'm sure others do too (and there's proof of that in the very first comment here.)

bbrodinsky 11/27/2016 02:56

imdvb: you complain about my lack of chess-related comments in my original post. But the article itself is not exactly reaming with chess analysis itself, and that is what the other commenters are complaining about as well. Compare this article with, say, Wesley So's article. It's clear what we all prefer.

imdvb_8793 11/27/2016 09:11

"Well, 2 other people commenting did not find the article to valuable either. And I will comment when I feel like."

Oh, there's no need to prove to me that trolls are stubborn - I know that already... (Also, it's 3-2 in this respect - I hardly think that's statistically relevant. And, more importantly, the other two posters had completely different reasons for not liking the article - valid ones, that might pop up for any such article, and often do. Not paranoid and unfounded ones, like yours.)

I'm not trying to censor you. You expressed your point of view about Dlugy's opinions, and I expressed mine about yours. In a similar tone - you get what you give. Beyond that, you're, of course, free to do whatever you want - indeed, even if you insist on having that kind of attitude. I'm sure the comments showing explicit solidarity with your stance will start poring in any minute now... (Although I probably shouldn't be inviting you to resort to cheap IP tricks, by saying that. Who knows how vain you might be?!...)

bbrodinsky 11/27/2016 03:18

Well, 2 other people commenting did not find the article to valuable either. And I will comment when I feel like. If chessbase feels my comment is not worthwhile, I'm sure they will delete it. It's up to them, not you, fortunately. I repeat: I find the article borderline sarcastic and condescending towards the players, who deserve more respect. And chessbase deserves a better article. Anyone's certainly free to disagree with me. But they shouldn't be trying to censor me, mister.

imdvb_8793 11/26/2016 07:47

bbrodinsky - you're horribly overreacting to, mostly, I'm assuming, this line: "the not-so-deep forced line starting with Nxf2 was obvious to everyone who played a some chess." This is just a GM's opinion about the difficulty of finding this line for a decent player (under normal circumstances - he never says anything about the tension of the situation and how that affected things for Carlsen and Karjakin simply because that should be obvious to all who have been following the match, and not only), there's no sarcasm there. I don't see what's wrong with getting some extra reactions from strong players present at the venue. As for "those guys don't know what they're doing", he never even remotely implied that. (Nor is that something any GM would ever think, by the way. Only amateurs like yourself think that way. Maybe you're not an amateur, I don't know, but you're definitely acting like one.) You're being paranoid. Chessbase, please don't listen to this troll! These articles are quite welcome.

It'd be nice if you could spare us such comments in the future! People like you make reading the comments section for these articles a very frustrating experience sometimes - and that's not good for anyone. Nobody cares about your misguided little crusade beyond, perhaps, like myself, getting mildly annoyed by it - trust me -, and you're not helping anyone, least of all yourself, or in any way advancing the general discussion about the championship or Chessbase's coverage, by displaying such an attitude.

bbrodinsky 11/26/2016 12:35

I'm always turned off in life when someone sitting on the sidelines (in this case with a computer) goes "those guys don't know what they're doing, I would have done this, I would have done that". I call bullspit on such people. All I can say is, there's a reason Carlsen and Karjakin are sitting in a booth playing for the world's championship, and this guy is..... where? An overly sarcastic and self-serving report. Chessbase can certainly do better.

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